15 September 2018

Jan Vinckers and the illusion of authority

J.B. Vinckers

The schoolteacher who wrote a brochure arguing that the Oera Linda-book has to be fake, because its language does not have proper grammatical cases as do German, Latin and Old Greek, pretended to have a (high-status) double family name. Also, at least two of his descendants, a daughter and a son's granddaughter, proved to think very positive of the OLB, in strong contrast to their (fore)father. They knew that he had been either badly mistaken or perhaps he was paid (or promised something) for discrediting the OLB. If his arguments had been any good, they should long have been translated at least into English and German.

A double family name is a status symbol for many people, as it creates the illusion of nobility. Jan "Beckering" Vinckers (1821-1891) used his second given name as if it was part of his family name. Only seven years after his death, in 1898, most of his children bought the addition to their family name Vinckers.

fragment of birth certificate proving that
"Jan Beckering" was his given name

pretending to have a double family name when he
published his anti-OLB brochures in 1876 and 1877

One daughter, Geertruida Vinckers (1866-1958), did not use the double name and most significantly, she and her husband Steffen Bartstra (who was a clergyman) named their first son, not after any of their fathers, as was tradition. Instead they named him Friso Adeling Bartstra. He lived from 1897 till 1942. This name can only have been a tribute to the Oera Linda-book.

Also significantly, a great-granddaughter of Jan B. Vinckers, mrs. Cornelia Woldt-Beckering Vinckers (born 1929), corresponded with a German Oera Linda researcher and translator, Harm Menkens, stating that she knew her great-grandfather had been wrong when he accused Cornelis Over de Linden of fraud and dismissed the Oera Linda-book as a forgery (see below). She will probably not have come to this conclusion herself. Her grandfather Harco Beckering Vinckers (1862-1934), son of Jan B. Vinckers, was a linguist and schoolteacher of the Dutch language. It is more likely that he already did.

Dear Mr. Menkens! It was a wonderful surprise to receive your gift. I was very happy, to find out at the end of my existence, that it is granted to me, to somehow ablate the shame inflicted by my great-grandfather on the Over de Linden family. Thank you so much for this gift!! Many, many thanks, your Cornelia Woldt, born Beckering Vinckers, Neumünster.

suche / zoek / soek / sök / søk / søg / seek/ sykje

F R Y A ~ S K É D N I S E

the early speech of our fore-fathers

"The pure Friesic and easy wording of the Oera Linda Book must be most welcome to students of English and Saxon, as a widening of the now too narrow ground of the early speech of our fore-fathers." Wm. Barnes. Macmillan's Magazine,April 1877, p. 465.

Video Studies

Cornelis Over de Linden (1811-1874) Den Helder

Eelco Verwijs (1830-1880)

first scholar who studied the manuscript and confirmed its authenticity (1867) - later he withdrew this conclusion, probably to save his career

Jan Ottema (1804-1879) Leeuwarden

first translator and publisher of the 'Oera Linda Bok' (1872 & 1876)

the oldest production of European literature

"We may thus accept that we possess in this manuscript, of which the first part was composed in the sixth century before our era, the oldest production, after Homer and Hesiod, of European literature. And here we find in our fatherland a very ancient people in possession of development, civilisation, industry, navigation, commerce, literature, and pure elevated ideas of religion, whose existence we had never even conjectured."Dr. J.G. Ottema, 1871 (translation Sandbach)